Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

Most of Law School is focused on the common-law, but statutory law comprises the vast majority of American law today and cases involving how to interpret statutes form the basis of most modern legal practice. This course introduces students to the legal doctrines and theories of statutory interpretation/legislation and will give students the tools to apply these principles to any area of statutory law. The course utilizes statutory cases across many fields--ranging from tax, to health, to discrimination, to national security--and so also will give students a small taste of many different areas of law.

Our primary focus will be on the how courts' understandings of the legislative process (and their role in it) affect how judges interpret statutes. We'll learn the various "canons of interpretation" and we'll consider questions such as: When statutes are obsolete should courts update them or read them as written, leaving the updating to Congress? Should "legislative history" be consulted when courts interpret legislation? Can Congress dictate how its statutes are interpreted by courts? And we'll explore the major battles in the statutory interpretation wars on the U.S. Supreme Court, most notably the battle between "textualists" and "purposivists." Throughout, we'll pay close attention to the intersection of law and politics, and how Congress and the legislative process work.